Recently, with the development of technologies for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), demands for providing feedback through various senses to improve user's immersion in content have been increasing. In particular, in the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), virtual reality technology was introduced as one of future promising technologies. With this trend, research is being actively carried out to provide a user experience with respect to all human senses including an olfactory sense and a tactile sense beyond a user experience (UX) which is mainly limited to a visual sense and an auditory sense.
A thermoelement (TE) is a device which produces an exothermic reaction or an endothermic reaction through a Peltier effect by receiving electric energy. The thermoelement is expected to be used for providing thermal feedback to a user. However, a conventional thermoelement mainly using a flat substrate has been limited in application thereof because it is difficult to press the conventional thermoelement against a user's body part.
However, in recent years, as development of a flexible thermoelement (FTE) has reached a successful stage, the flexible thermoelement is expected to overcome the problems of the conventional thermoelectric devices and to effectively transfer thermal feedback to a user.